Book of Hours
by BlackRose
Summary: Series of glimpses into Ashley's life post-game. Will contain yaoi, angst, humor... a little bit of everything. *On Hold for rewrite*
1. 10.12.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct. 12, 2001  
by [BlackRose][1]

  
  
You would think him vain. It's a trapping that would suit his image, and he wears the shadows of it like a worn cloak.

He isn't, though. Not really. He is _neat_ - he prefers clean to dirty, both in himself and his garments. His hair falls naturally around the bones of his face, but that is only happenstance, heavy gold strands with a texture like silk that he was gifted with at birth. He takes no great pains with it, nor with the body or face that he was likewise blessed with. 

He is not unaware of his image, but neither is he vain of it. His vanity lies in other places, in an arrogance and pride of his abilities rather then the chance gifts of his physical lineage. He prefers things over which he has control.

I saw him before a mirror once. He had paused there, his own image looking back at him, painted in pale flesh and dark shadows. His eyes were dark and hooded, contemplative. I asked him what he saw.

"Nothing," he replied.

"Are you of the undead, then?" I asked in jest. "To cast no reflection?"

His eyes, within the surface of the mirror, met mine. "Need you ask, Riskbreaker?" he asked in reply, his lips turning cooly upwards. 

He turned to brush past me, then. But his image within the mirror, like the afterimage of the sun upon a man's eyes, lingered with a gaze as dark as stone beside my own reflection for a heartbeat before following him. 

   [1]: mailto:lenoirrose@softhome.net



	2. 10.13.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct 13, 2001  
by BlackRose

  
  
I draw it upon him. I am no artist, but there are only three major lines to the thing - even *I* can manage that. It is the same gesture traced by priests dozens of times each day, over the heads of the faithful - one long stroke down, crossed by two shorter lines, right to left, left to right.   
  
Benediction. Blessing.  
  
Shadows.  
  
I can trace it in less then a heartbeat, the barest movement of a finger or thumb as I grasp his cloaked shoulder for a brief moment, or sketched quickly in the air between his shoulder blades as he steps in front of me. Unnoticed. Unobtrusive. I trace it across him when the chance presents itself, as though that act of doing so might leave some trace of it lingering upon him like the scent of a brazier's sweet incense. As though I might, in doing so, let some small portion of the shadow cling once more to him.  
  
Wishful thinking. But I find myself doing it time and again, all the same. He would laugh at me if he knew.  
  
Sometimes, when I sketch those quick three lines, I can feel the low throb of the ones traced across my own back like an echo that shivers down my spine. Ink upon flesh... I wonder, at times, if he received it as I did, in one blinding instant, the Dark imprinted upon skin in tangible form.  
  
Or did he lay stretched upon an artist's table to take the quick prick of needle into his flesh? Were the ink and needles themselves crafted to be talismans to the Dark?  
  
He won't tell me. I daren't ask. And the Dark keeps its secrets, the past shrouded in veils of passing hours.  
  
Mark of the Rood cross, inverse. Three lines. Only three, rife with ghosts and other things. I wonder what it would be like to trace them across his skin.  
  



	3. 10.14.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct 14, 2001  
by BlackRose

  
  
The fading light of sunset filtered through the drapes, hazy gold and scarlet lending a warmth to the room that faded and then rose again with the movement of the clouds passing outside. He had drawn his chair closer to the window to take advantage of that last dim light, heedless of the lamp waiting to be lit.  
  
Whatever he was reading had his attention; he never glanced up when I came to the door. The loose locks of his hair fall down around his face when he reads and the light from the window gathered on those strands, setting the crown of his head afire with a faerie glow as he bent over his book.   
  
He cradled the leather bound volume on his knees, the back of one hand gently holding his place as he looked over the pages. I've never seen him tear so much as a single sheet of vellum. He turns the leaves as carefully as he can and as only he can - the fall of his hair shielded most of the motion from my sight but I have witnessed it often enough that I can see, in my mind's eye, the entirety of the gesture. One hand lifts to his lips, fingers curled inward. The tip of his tongue just touches the back of one steel capped knuckle, like the daintiest lick of a particularly dignified cat. The hand is lowered again, turned, and that knuckle is pressed to the sheet of the page, lifting it up and over in a smooth gesture.  
  
Through a whole volume he will do that, one page after another, his eyes devouring the text as he sits in utter stillness but for that one series of motions. Careful, quick, neat.  
  
I only realized that I had watched him do it some handfuls of times when the light faded once more and this time did not return, leaving the room in the dusky half life of encroaching night. My footsteps on the carpet were muffled; he only glanced up when I eased the glass from the lamp with a muted clink, but if the sound startled him he showed no sign.  
  
"Light, Sydney," I chided him. The tiny flame flared on the oil soaked wick and I set the glass back in place, lifting the lamp to bring its circle of golden light closer to him. "It's what the lamps are for."  
  
His lips barely moved in a brief turn upwards, his eyes still distant with whatever far away place or thoughts the words of his book gave to him. "Thank you."  
  
"You're welcome," I replied, but he had already turned away once more, another page carefully lifted and turned as he lost himself in reading.  
  



	4. 10.15.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct 15, 2001  
by BlackRose

  
  
He is not a child of the morning - he doesn't rise early or easily, most times, prefering to sleep late if he can. Rousted from bed, eyes closed, the strands of his hair tousled and tumbling about his face... he looks less then half his age. A slender youth, not yet a man, pale and wraith like in the morning glare.   
  
He sleeps mostly upon his back, the heavy weight of his hands stretched safely away, fingers curled inwards. Watching him in the early morning I sometimes wonder how he slept before receiving them - as a child did he curl upon his side, the hands of a small boy pillowed beneath his cheek? Did his hair fall across his eyes then, as it does now? Silver and gold mixed strands of spun silk, heavy and fine. His face, in sleep, is so much younger; the hardness of his eyes hidden behind closed lids, the harsher twists of his mouth lost in the laxness of slumber. Does sleep make children of us all? When I wake him, I try to do so gently - the call of his name or purposeful noise in the room around him. It is learned habit, imprinted rather keenly after my own folly in once shaking him awake.   
  
He was quite apologetic afterwards but I dislike repeating my mistakes. They say appearance is only skin deep... but I prefer my skin unscored and the appearance of his innocence lasts only until his eyes open.  
  



	5. 10.16.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct 16, 2001  
by BlackRose

  
  
"You're letting the storm in."   
  
"It's not a storm," I countered without turning. His footsteps halted somewhere behind my shoulder. "It's only rain."  
  
Sydney made a soft scoffing noise. Outside, it was gray - ever since morning, now into afternoon, and looking to continue well into night. Gray and the rain sheeting down, fat heavy drops that fell to splash against the puddles and dance in a cacophony against the rooftops. I had been sitting there for hours upon the window sill, my back against one side, my feet propped against the other. The rain poured down an arm's reach away, cool and wet, a cascading waterfall spiraling down from the gutters above. "What do you like about rain?" he asked quietly. He had moved a step closer but I hadn't heard it above the sounds outside. I could just feel his presence against my shoulder, like a spot of warmth in the coolness of the rainfall.   
  
"Nothing," I replied. "It's too warm inside."  
  
I heard the soft clink and scrape, metal on metal on wood as he leaned an arm against the window frame just baside me. His voice was close, brushing against the nape of my turned neck with a ghostly promise of heat. "Rain," he mused softly, "turns the whole of the world to churned mud."  
  
"Rain washes things clean," I answered. "It renews."  
  
"Does it?" He sounded faintly amused. An errant scrap of wind stirred outside, billowing the fabric of the curtains inward in swirls of pale gold that fluttered, protesting, before dropping once more. The cold splash of raindrops against my outward turned arm only made the heat of his presence all the sharper against the other.  
  
"I've always prefered fire," Sydney said softly. His fingers scraped softly against the windowframe as he stepped away, his footsteps retreating once more.  
  



	6. 10.17.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct 17, 2001  
by BlackRose

  
  
Everyone has dark times. The hours spent, in the still blackness of night, beset by the demons of too much thought. Laying awake, staring into nothingness, with only the ghosts of memories to keep one chill company.   
  
Sydney's come in the hours before dawn, when the night is the most silent, and though his body lies beside my own his mind is too far away for me to touch. Sometimes it is dreams, the images of his mind's eye blood drenched in sleep and echoing outwards to jangle harsh against my own nerves. Other times he merely lies awake, his thoughts pressed deep and quiet behind open eyes, but always it is the same.   
  
He aches. Empty and hollow, with a hunger that nothing I can offer will fill. He aches with it like a physical thing and in the darkness he retreats, alone, his memories cupped to his breast like treasured tokens who bury sharp spurs into his flesh. He keeps the wound alive within him, caressing it like the touch of a lover, opening it again and again.   
  
I don't know what salve I can offer that wound. My words are clumsy and awkward at best, raw stones to his polished jewels, and though he takes my touch it does not press aught but his flesh. I may only watch, as voiceless as the memories he gathers to him.  
  
He will drown in it, someday. Every night he slips a little farther away, wading willingly into a dark depth of chill waves. Though I stretch my hand forth he will not take it.   
  
When he slips beneath those waters, will I be the one left to gather my own memories of him to me, treasuring the ghost of what was? I find myself storing them against that day - the taste and feel of him, the sound of his voice, the light glinting liquid gold from pale strands of hair. Anything and everything that he is willing to give me, barbs and all.   
  
He aches. As do I. Could I but cut it from my own flesh, I think that I would give it back to him in a heartbeat. Better he then I.   
  
But my prayers have nowhere to go any longer. My wishes have no life and in the dark, with the ghosts, we both lay awake and watch the other bleed.   
  



	7. 10.18.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct 18, 2001  
by BlackRose

  
  
A study in contradictions. Hot. Cold. Aloof. Teasing. Here... and then not. Like the will-o-the-wisp, he dances just out of reach, forever beckoning but never close enough to grasp.  
  
Perhaps I just don't have the courage to reach out and touch.  
  
His eyes laugh even when he makes no sound. There is nothing innocent or joyful in his laughter, though. It is cool and sometimes mocking, always amused. The world is a theater play and he the audience, waiting to be entertained.  
  
He laughs often at me but I have learned to ignore the sting of it. His silences speak just as much as his words, and just as sharply. I thought I knew silence before I met him. Now, I know so many more shades of it then I knew before.   
  
My dreams are of a silence filled with the soft rasp of steel against steel.  
  



	8. 10.23.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct 23, 2001  
by BlackRose

  
  
His kisses are wine, heady and rich, sweet and bitter. Poison and honey on his tongue, flowing like nectar from his lips. A world of depth can be read within each one, shifting like mercury with his moods.   
  
White. Cool. Dry and sharp, leaving a tang upon the taste when he is indifferent.  
  
Blushed. Fragrant and touched with just the hint of sweet, almost contemplative.  
  
Red. Deep and rich, sweet and full. Rarer then the lost pressings of Lea Monde's vinyards and savored that much more.  
  
Cool or warm. Honeyed or bitter. His lips would put the finest bottles of a nobleman's wine cellar to shame, and the things which flow from them - kisses or words - would make drunkards of even the stoutest priests.  
  



	9. 10.24.01

**Book of Hours**  
Oct 24, 2001  
by BlackRose

  
  
They used to say that he hummed his prophecies. That his voice could entrance. Spell singer. Words that pierced through a man's soul, breathed on sweet tune and whisper. That Mullenkamp's legacy lived on in his veins and found life on his lips.  
  
I have never heard him hum. I have certainly never heard him sing. His voice is first in his arsenal of weapons, before knife, before sword, before the wicked blades that curve from his fingertips. It can be anything that he needs of it - sharp, cutting, low and smooth, harsh, piercing, mocking, sweet, laughing, angry. Anything at all. But I have never heard it raised in any kind of song.  
  
To them he gave his music, prophecies hummed like arias. To me he gives only words and silence, but I have learned the scales hidden within them.  
  



End file.
